Item: MIP Fund Accounting
Rating: 7
Author: Steven Maluenda

Overall Satisfaction with MIP Fund Accounting

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

MIP Fund Accounting primarily is used in my role for budgeting and developing reports on expenses and receivables. This product also allows myself to create a chart of account and make editions throughout the year. Business problems this product helps with are yearly operating budgets that we can develop, track daily to yearly expenses, show an overview of revenue captured, and allow the organization to better interpret its expenses and revenue through the year.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Budget Worksheets
Development of reports
Provides two version - MIP Cloud and Older Version to utilize
Provide accurate reporting and easy to use templates on their cloud

Cons

Developing simple grant budgets that align with each grant
Simplify budget development. Budget Worksheets are great but challenge to develop
Can Manage Recurring Entries be performed on the Cloud easier

Return on Investment

Created a better outlook for our finance team on expense tracking and revenue tracking
Allowed our organization to analyze financial reports accurately
Developed new reporting methods.

Performance

Very well, it has allowed our finance team to utilize reports to the fullest to show numerous areas of how we are doing financially in our programs or administrative expenses. General Ledgers, Program Budget Reports, and Financial Statements are heavy utilized by our team and help tremendously. Dashboard use also is one function that helps provide visualization that creates easy to read updates on organizations financial capacity.

Likelihood to Renew

I believe it is a good software but there are more improvement I believe that could be done. If the software program could just blend their cloud and classic version into one, that would be great. Also, if Abila could allow templates to be uploaded than to manually enter in entries or GJ's would be greatly appreciated!

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise

MIP Fund works well such as one competitor I have used before. Adapting to other online program software systems is the only thing I can think of that MIP could do better. But primarily as a non-profit with little time on hand and always overworked, a simpler software program goes a long way. If this program can provide this accounting software to be easier, that would be great!

Key Insights

Do you think MIP Fund Accounting delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with MIP Fund Accounting's feature set?

Yes

Did MIP Fund Accounting live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of MIP Fund Accounting go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy MIP Fund Accounting again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Excel Analyzer, Classy, Andar/360

Likelihood to Recommend

I think overall the program is developed to be a bit user-friendly in most areas by providing layouts on dashboards, creating source codes for chart of accounts, and reporting on finances. It would be a bit beneficial if it can be a bit more compatible with payroll software systems through integration.

Using MIP Fund Accounting

Support Headcount Required

4 - One is an accountant while the three other members are business majors with experience in finance departments. The overall use of the program has brought more light for staff members to dive deeper into learning how this software performs certain financial features. But everyone on the team has the capability to support the accounting needs through Abila.

Business Processes Supported

Monthly recurring entries
journal entries
accounts payable
chart of accounts

Innovative Uses

develop recurring entries and standard entries
report building
budget worksheets

Future Planned Uses

Creating more features in cloud such as reports
Using classic to develop automatic payments
recording accounts payable with better accuracy

Users and Roles

4 - Accountant and business majors with over 40 years of experience combines that allows each and every person to perform the necessary functions. Each person has the experience to run functions properly to use the full effect of MIP accounting. More use will come as we continue to dive deeper with MIP fund accounting.

Evaluating MIP Fund Accounting and Competitors

Products Replaced

Key Differentiators

Cloud Solutions
Scalability

Evaluation Lessons Learned

The biggest part would be how can the software functions provide the necessary need for our organization to use. Previous person in position didn't have full experience and we realized how our organization will need more time invested in MIP to have it fully function to best support our needs.

MIP Fund Accounting Training

Training Types Used

Online Training

In-Person Training

Online Training

The training with Laura was amazing. She had answered all our questions and customized the training to our needs that we are working with and trying to address using MIP accounting. The only thing I wish that could come out of the trainings was to have permanent access to the recordings of our paid trainings we received. They recordings of the training only last for a short time before it goes away which makes it hard to go back and re-watch and learn.

MIP Fund Accounting Support

MIP Fund Accounting Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Knowledgeable team No escalation required Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response	Need to explain problems multiple times

Premium Support

We have purchased premium support before with the purchase of several hours of training. The use was because of an influx of new team members for our financial department. The extensive support allowed members to learn. But would be nice to have that support without the major cost of the training.

Bug Resolution

Support Rating

The support is decently good but sometimes when I need help with functions on the software program. I'm told that either I should look on the forum for more support or that we would need to purchase additional help. While I understand the need to purchase trainings, it would be helpful to receive help on the spot for an issue that wouldn't take longer than five minutes.

Using MIP Fund Accounting

Easy Tasks

Reporting
Budget Worksheets
Chart of Accounts

Difficult Tasks

Entering recurring Entries
How to fix API corrections
Developing automatic recording entries if we receive payments

Usability Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Consistent	Unnecessarily complex Requires technical support Slow to learn Cumbersome Feel nervous using Lots to learn

Usability

I put a five because I didn't have experience before using MIP at our organization. Coming in with a fresh new view point saw that this software program was hard to use. It has taken time to learn and understand. I am starting to really understand it but that has been over the course of a year. The limited training and paying for training is tough to get started too. Because the trainings can be expensive and our organization doesn't want to pay for them all the time.

MIP Fund Accounting Reliability

Scalability

The flexibility to create certain features are helpful and are designed to be easier on MIP Accounting Cloud. It has been easier than the MIP Accounting classic version. I may have not fully utilized the software to deploy across multiple departments other than generating revenue reports or expenses. As well as developing budget worksheets for our departments. Which are great as it is, but have not gone farther than that.

Reliability and Availability

MIP Accounting is great in this area, it has been available at all times and even tells you when there is an update to the system. Those tend to be outside of the working hours which is really great. But not much issues have occurred with the system which is great in itself.

Integrating MIP Fund Accounting

Ease of Integration

We have not integrated any other functions with this software program.

Systems Integrated With

None
None
None

We have not used any other program to integrate with MIP Accounting.

Future Integration Plans

Microsoft Excel

Can there be templates we use on Excel that can upload for easy set up and quick set up on MIP? That would be tremendous in saving us time and effort to perform the necessary work in a timely fashion.

Types of Integration

File import/export

We have only used file export with Chart of Accounts or MIP Cloud we use export for all the reports we print out and share. That is one of the biggest functionalities we use. It has been a great use for use but not sure of other integration technologies to use with MIP.

Integration Lessons Learned

I have no advice since we have little to no experience integrating a function or service to MIP Fund Accounting.

Comments

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Michael Young
(Vendor Representative) commented 9 months ago
Thank you for your review, Steven. It sounds like our training offerings have benefited your organization tremendously. Regarding data upload, it is possible to use templates to import data from external sources. Please reach out to MIPCustomerSuccess@communitybrands.com to learn how we can help.